Virtual Reality Lab - Universitat de Barcelona

The competitive anxiety is present in sportive activity, in the case of football has been seen that the kick of penal is one of the situations that generates more anxiety in the players given of the importance that supposes wining or failing. A technic to work the pressure that supposes the kick of penal, is the use of imagination, but it is limited. An alternative could be Virtual Reality that allows to recreate the conditions and control the variables.

The aim of this study is to see how a virtual representation of kicks of penal could influence the performance and some psychological factors, such as the anxiety and self-confidence, taking into account the sportive orientation with a sample of 23 male football players.

To evaluate anxiety, it is used CSAI-2R questionnaire, composed with the subscales of somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety and self-confidence that it administers before and after the Virtual Reality. To measure the orientation in sport it is used the POSQ questionnaire that differentiates between Ego and Task orientation.

The results obtained by SPSS with an ANOVA mixt inter-intra subjects, show there is not a significant interaction for time-group, fact that could be expected to change with an increase of the sample. However, it can be seen a main effect of the time, showing the effectiveness of the Virtual Reality.

Virtual Reality, football, anxiety, self-confidence, sport orientation